Francine Escobar, owner of Quicki-Kleen Car Wash, points to the turkey donation forms that she hung as streamers inside her convenience store. Each of the more than 100 papers, decorated with a tur...

ROSE ALBANO RISSO/The Bulletin

The white streamers hanging in the ceiling of Quicki-Kleen Car Wash’s convenience store are not the expensive type. But for Francine Escobar, the owner of business on East Yosemite Avenue across from Lincoln Elementary School, each of the more than 100 pieces of white paper simply adorned with a black-and-white illustration of a turkey is priceless.

That’s because each paper signifies the generous gesture of many people, customers who took part in a Thanksgiving program aimed at collecting money to buy turkey for Second Harvest Food Bank in Manteca. More than 100 turkeys were donated to Second Harvest as a result of the “program” that Escobar offered for the first time this year.

Her program was simple.

“I put up a sign at the entrance to the car wash that said, for every #3 car wash (selected) I’ll donate a turkey in your name to Second Harvest. And that’s what they did,” she said of the more than 100 customers who responded to her offer.

Each #3 car wash service costs $20. She then handed out to each customer who accepted the philanthropic challenge a 3x3-inch piece of paper for them to fill out and write their names.

Just before Thanksgiving, Escobar met with Second Harvest executive Mike Mallory at Costco where he and his crew picked up the boxes of frozen turkeys for the Thanksgiving distribution to needy families.

Escobar said she decided to make a donation after “I read in the (Bulletin) paper how bad it was for Second Harvest this year” with not enough turkeys and food items to distribute to the needy this Thanksgiving.

“I read in the paper how the shelves (at Second Harvest) were pretty empty because of the economy. So I decided, let’s make a team effort” to help the food bank, Escobar said.

“This is my own way of helping our community,” she said.

Customers who took part in the program were also made “aware of what was happening in the community,” she added.

“It also made them feel good. So I feel really blessed. The more I give, the more I receive from my God. God works in mysterious ways; it’s awesome,” said Escobar, a former seminary student who calls her store “my church.”